单选题Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. Many foreigners who have not visited Britain call all the inhabitants English, for they are used to thinking of the British Isles as England. {{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}, the British Isles contain a variety of peoples, and only the people of England call themselves English. The others {{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}to themselves as Welsh, Scottish, or Irish, {{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}the case may be; they are often slightly annoyed {{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}being classified as "English". Even in England there are many {{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}in regional character and speech. The chief {{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}is between southern England and northern England. South of a {{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}going from Bristol to London, people speak the type of English usually learnt by foreign students, {{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}there are local variations. Further north regional speech is usually "broader" than {{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}of southern Britain. Northerners are {{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}to claim that they work harder than Southerners, and are more {{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}They are open-hearted and hospitable; foreigners often find that they make friends with them {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}. Northerners generally have hearty {{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}: the visitor to Lancashire or Yorkshire, for instance, may look forward to receiving {{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}helpings at meal times. In accent and character the people of the Midlands {{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}a gradual change from the southern to the northern type of Englishman. In Scotland the sound {{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}by the letter "R" is generally a strong sound, and "R" is often pronounced in words in which it would be {{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}in southern English. The Scots are said to be a serious, cautious, thrifty people, {{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}inventive and somewhat mystical. All the Celtic people of Britain (the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots) are frequently {{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}as being more "fiery" than the English. They are {{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}a race that is quite distinct from the English.

单选题 On America's Gulf coast, massive industrial facilities stand idle. Miles of twisting stainless-steel pipes and huge storage tanks gleam uselessly in the sun. They are a reminder of the hundreds of billions of dollars that America has invested in terminals for handling imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Thanks to the boom in domestic shale gas, those imports are no longer needed. America produces nearly as much gas as it consumes, and will soon produce far more. So the obvious thing to do with those idle terminals is to re-engineer them to handle exports. Instead of receiving shiploads of liquefied gas and re-gasifying it, they should be taking American gas, liquefying it and loading it onto tankers. Converting these plants will not be cheap—each one will cost at least $5 billion. But the potential rewards are much larger. In America gas sells for around $3.40 per million British thermal units (mBTU). In Europe it costs around $12. In gas-poor Asia, spot cargoes change hands for as much as $20 per mBTU. Since it costs roughly $5 per mBTU to liquefy the stuff, ship it and turn it back into gas, America could be making a fortune from gas exports. To the extent that such exports displaced dirty coal, they would also help curb global warming. Most of America's two dozen LNG import terminals have applied for export licences. Yet only one, Sabine Pass in Louisiana, has actually started retooling its kit. Gas from there will start flowing onto global markets by the end of 2015. Why has every other terminal been so slow to seize this opportunity? Converting a plant is not easy: firms must build now upon row of expensive fridges, known as "liquefaction trains", to get gas moving in the opposite direction. But the real hold-up is political. No LNG facility besides Sabine has yet received permission to export. American law requires the Department of Energy to determine whether gas exports are in the public interest, and President Barack Obama's administration is in no hurry to make up its mind.

单选题New technology links the world as never before. Our planet has shrunk. It"s now a "global village" where countries are only seconds away by fax or phone or satellite link. And, of course, our ability to benefit from this high-tech communications equipment is greatly enhanced by foreign language skills. Deeply involved with this new technology is a breed of modern businesspeople who have a growing respect for the economic value of doing business abroad. In modern markets, success overseas often helps support domestic business efforts. Overseas assignments are becoming increasingly important to advancement within executive ranks. The executive stationed in another country no longer need fear being "out of sight and out of mind." He or she can be sure that the overseas effort is central to the company"s plan for success, and that promotions often follow or accompany an assignment abroad. If an employee can succeed in a difficult assignment overseas, superiors will have greater confidence in his or her ability to cope back in the United Sates where cross-cultural considerations and foreign language issues are becoming more and more prevalent. Thanks to a variety of relatively inexpensive communications devices with business applications, even small businesses in the United States are able to get into international markets. English is still the international language of business. But there is an ever-growing need for people who can speak another language. A second language isn"t generally required to get a job in business, but having language skills gives a candidate the edge when other qualifications appear to be equal. The employee posted abroad who speaks the country"s principal language has an opportunity to fast-forward certain negotiations, and can have the cultural insight to know when it is better to move more slowly. The employee at the home office who can communicate well with foreign clients over the telephone or by fax machine is an obvious asset to the firm.

单选题Some houses are designed to be smart. Others have smart designs. An example of the second type of house won an Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Architects. Located on the shore of Sullivan"s Island off the coast of South Carolina, the award-winning cube-shaped beach house was built to replace one smashed to pieces by Hurricane Hugo 10 years ago. In September 1989, Hugo struck South Carolina, killing 18 people and damaging or destroying 36,000 homes in the state. Before Hugo, many new houses built along South Carolina"s shoreline were poorly constructed, and enforcement of building codes wasn"t strict, according to architect RayHuff, who created the cleverly-designed beach house. In Hugo"s wake, all new shoreline houses are required to meet stricter, better-enforced codes. The new beach house on Sullivan"s Island should be able to withstand a Category 3 hurricane with peak winds of 179 to 209 kilometers per hour. At first sight, the house on Sullivan"s Island looks anything but hurricane-proof. Its redwood shell makes it resemble "a large party lantern" at night, according to one observer. But looks can be deceiving. The house"s wooden frame is reinforced with long steel rods to give it extra strength. To further protect the house from hurricane damage, Huff raised it 2.7 meters off the ground on timber pilings—long, slender columns of wood anchored deep in the sand. Pilings might appear insecure, but they are strong enough to support the weight of the house. They also elevate the house above storm surges. The pilings allow the surges to run under the house instead of running into it. "These swells of water come ashore at tremendous speeds and cause most of the damage done to beach- front buildings." said Huff. Huff designed the timber pilings to be partially concealed by the house"s ground-to-roof shell. "The shell masks the pilings so that the house doesn"t look like it"s standing with its pant legs pulled up." said Huff. In the event of a storm surge, the shell should break apart and let the waves rush under the house, the architect explained.

单选题For the first time, George Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons around the world, where key terrorist suspects—100 in all, officials say—have been interrogated with " an alternative set of procedures ". Fourteen of the suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11th attacks, were transferred on Monday to the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where some will face trial for war crimes before special military commissions. Many of these men—as Mr. Bush confirmed in a televised speech at the White House on September 6th—are al-Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters who had sought to withhold information that could "save American lives". "In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly (and) questioned by experts," the president said. He declined to say where they had been held or why they had not simply been sent straight to Guantánamo, as some 770 other suspected terrorists have been. Mr. Bush also refused to reveal what interrogation methods had been used, saying only that, though "tough", they had been "safe and lawful and necessary". Many believe that the main purpose of the CIA"s prisons was to hide from prying eyes the torture and other cruel or degrading treatment used to extract information from prisoners. But Mr. Bush insisted that America did not torture: "It"s against our laws, and it"s against our values. I have not authorised it—and I will not authorise it." The Pentagon this week issued its long-awaited new Army Field Manual, forbidding all forms of torture and degrading treatment of prisoners by army personnel—though not the CIA. For the first time, it specifically bans forced nakedness, hooding, the use of dogs, sexual humiliation and "waterboarding" (simulated drowning)—all practices that have been used at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. So why did the president decide now to reveal the CIA"s secret programme? Partly, he confessed, because of the Supreme Court"s recent ruling that minimum protections under the Geneva Conventions applied to all military prisoners, no matter where they were. This has put American agents at risk of prosecution for war crimes. Mr. Bush has now asked Congress to ban suspected terrorists from suing American personnel in federal courts.

单选题American mythology loves nothing more than the reluctant hero: the man whose natural talents have destined him for more than obliging obscurity. George Washington, we are told, was a leader who would have preferred to have been a farmer. Thomas Jefferson, a writer. Martin Luther King, Jr., a preacher. These men were roused from lives of perfunctory achievement, our legends have it, not because they chose their own exceptionalism, but because we, the people, chose it for them. We—seeing greatness in them that they were too humble to observe themselves—conferred on them uncommon paths. Historical circumstance became its own call of duty, and the logic of democracy proved itself through the answer. Neil Armstrong was a hero of this stripe: constitutionally humble, circumstantially noble. Nearly every obituary written for him this weekend has made a point of emphasizing his sense of privacy, his sense of humility, his sense of the ironic ordinary. And yet every aspect of Armstrong"s life made clear: On that day in 1969, he acted on our behalf, out of a sense of mission that was communal rather than personal. The reluctant hero is also the self-sacrificing hero. And so Armstrong was an icon fit for America"s particular predilections: one who made history, yet one who recognized the ultimate contingency of his own history-making. One who, Washington-like, preferred quiet retirement over continued fame. "Nothing is more typical of Armstrong, or more estimable," Anthony Lane put it, "than his decision not to go into politics; heaven knows what the blandishments, or the invitations, must have been. And Armstrong, by dint of being the first man to tread not upon terra firma but upon the gray dust of terra incognita, rose above the fray and stayed there." And so Armstrong"s loss is not merely a loss for all the obvious reasons, but also because it signals a small shift in American mythology. If Armstrong"s was the age of the reluctant hero, ours is the age of adamant heroism. Our icons strive and struggle and seek. Our familiar figures are people who, whether or not their talents entitle them to it, explicitly sought their own fame. That is largely to the good. It means a democratic culture, a culture where systematized notions of merit—based on race, based on class—dissolve into the broader cultural will. But it also means a shift in how we see success and ourselves as seekers of it. The tension Armstrong embodied so succinctly—publicity on the one hand, humility on the other—is dissipating. The humility factor is dissolving into a culture that often equates fame with power. Our current icons are less the people who have been called to duty, and more the people who have battled their way into it—the subjects, rather than the predicates, of their own greatness. The reluctant hero is diminishing. Armstrong"s passing signals an end to that myth.

单选题 In the past 35 years, hundreds of millions of Chinese have found productive, if often exhausting, work in the country's growing cities. This extraordinary mobilization of labour is the biggest economic event of the past half-century. The world has seen nothing on such scale before. Will it see anything like it again? The answer lies across the Himalayas in India. India is an ancient civilization but a youthful country. Its working-age population is rising by about 12m people a year, even as China's shrank last year by 3m. Within a decade India will have the biggest potential workforce in the world. Optimists look forward to a bumper "demographic dividend", the result of more workers per dependant and more saving out of income. This combination accounted for perhaps a third of the East Asian miracle. India "has time on its side, literally," boasted one prominent politician, Kamal Nath, in a 2008 book entitled "India's Century". But although India's dreamers have faith in its youth, the country's youngest have growing reason to doubt India. The economy raised aspirations that it has subsequently failed to meet. From 2005 to 2007 it grew by about 9% a year. In 2010 it even grew faster than China (if the two economies are measured consistently). But growth has since halved. India's impressive savings rate, the other side of the demographic dividend, has also slipped. Worryingly, a growing share of household saving is bypassing the financial system altogether, seeking refuge from inflation in gold, bricks and mortar. The last time a Congress-led government liberalized the economy in earnest—in 1991—over 40% of today's Indians had yet to be born. Their anxieties must seem remote to India's elderly politicians. The average age of cabinet minister is 65. The country has never had a prime minister born in independent India. One man who might buck that trend, Rahul Gandhi, is the son, grandson and the great-grandson of former prime ministers. India is run by gerontocrats (老年统治者) and epigones (子孙): {{U}}grey hairs and groomed heirs{{/U}}. The apparent indifference of the police to the way young women in particular are treated has underlined the way that old India fails to protect new India.

单选题Artificial hearts have long been the stuff of science fiction. In "Robocop" , snazzy cardiac devices are made by Yamaha and Jensen, and in "Star Trek", Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise, has one implanted in the year 2328. In the present day, however, their history has been more chequered. The first serious attempt to build one happened in the 1980s, when Jarvik-7, made by Robert Jarvik, a surgeon at the University of Utah, captured the world"s attention. But Jarvik-7 was a complicated affair that needed to be connected via tubes to machines outside the body. The patient could not go home, nor even turn around in bed. Various other designs have been tried since, but all were seen as temporary expedients intended to tide a patient over until the real thing became available from a human donor. That may be about to change. This week, America"s Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to a new type of artificial heart made by Abiomed, a firm based near Boston. The agency granted a "humanitarian device exemption", a restricted form of approval that will allow doctors to implant the new device in people whose hearts are about to fail but who cannot, for reasons such as intolerance of the immunosuppressive drugs needed to stop rejection, receive a transplant. Such people have a life expectancy of less than a month, but a dozen similarly hopeless patients implanted with Abiomed"s heart survived for about five months. Unlike Dr. Jarvik"s device, this newfangled bundle of titanium and polyurethane aims to set the patient free. An electric motor revolving up to 10,000 times a minute pushes an incompressible fluid around the Abiomed heart, and that fluid, in turn, pushes the blood—first to the lungs to be oxygenated, and then around the body. Power is supplied by an electric current generated in a pack outside the body. This induces current in the motor inside the heart. All diagnostics are done remotely, using radio signals. There are no tubes or wires coming out of the patient. The charger is usually plugged into the mains, but if armed with a battery it can be carried around for hours in a vest or backpack, thus allowing the patient to roam freely. Most strikingly, the device"s internal battery can last half an hour before it needs recharging. That allows someone time to take a shower or even go for a quick swim without having to wear the charger. Abiomed"s chairman, Michael Minogue, does not claim that his firm"s product will displace human transplants. Even so, the firm has big ambitions. It is already developing a new version that will be 30% smaller (meaning more women can use it) and will last for five years. That should be ready by 2008—320 years earlier than the writers of "Star Trek" predicted.

单选题American Museum of Natural History is one of the largest natural and historic museums in the world and one of the main natural history research and education centres in the United States, set up in 1869 and located in the west of the Central Park, Manhattan District, New York. It 1 7 hectares in its total area, 2 classical types of buildings. The 3 of ancient creatures and humanity is 4 the first place of all the museums in the world, 5 the representative samples from South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia were collected, besides those from the 6 country, the United States. In the museum, there are five kinds of exhibits, including astronomy, mineralogy, human history, and animals in the 7 times and those in modern times. There are thirty-eight exhibition halls with different 8 from 500 to 1,500 square metres. Besides these, there is a Roosevelt Memorial Hall in 9 of President Roosevelt who supported the 10 of the museum, which is also used to have a special exhibition, showing the new important 11 on natural sciences and 12 affairs and social problems, and special topics connected closely with the life of the citizens. Besides this, it is also used for avocation 13 to have all kinds of scientific activities in the laboratories, centres of natural science and centres for citizens. There are more than 10 14 research departments mainly 15 for collection of samples, research and work of publication. In the museum, there are 16 and sub-libraries of Aulspond ancient amniote, with about 300 thousand books and magazines 17 natural history, many of 18 are very valuable monographs for the first edition. It has published many expert books and magazines, and a large number of propaganda materials, 19 which are the two magazines, Natural History and Members of Museum that have the biggest 20 of their magazines.

单选题Dogs are social animals and without proper training, they will behave like wild animals. They will soil your house, destroy your belongings, bark excessively, fight other dogs and even bite you. Nearly all behavior problems are perfectly normal dog activities that occur at the wrong time or place or are directed at the wrong thing. The key to preventing or treating behavior problems is learning to teach the dog to redirect its normal behavior to outlets that are acceptable in the domestic setting. One of the best things you can do for your dog and yourself is to obedience train it. Obedience training doesn"t solve all behavior problems, but it is the foundation for solving just about any problem. Training opens up a line of communication between you and your dog. Effective communication is necessary to instruct your dog about what you want it to do. Training is also an easy way to establish the social rank order. When your dog obeys a simple request of "come here, sit," it is showing obedience and respect for you. It is not necessary to establish yourself as top dog or leader of the pack by using extreme measures. You can teach your dog its subordinate role by teaching it to show submission to you. Most dogs love performing tricks for you to pleasantly accept that you are in charge. Training should be fun and rewarding for you and your dog. It can enrich your relationship and make living together more enjoyable. A well-trained dog is more confident and can more safely be allowed a greater amount of freedom than an untrained animal.

单选题Genetics may determine to what extent you"re swayed by the alcohol consumption of people around you. A study published in a recent issue of Psychological Science found that people with a particular genetic profile are far more likely than others without the gene to drink more when they see someone else drinking heavily. The finding is quite meaningful and illustrates "how much genetics determines drinking patterns of individuals exposed to other drinkers," said psychiatrist Dr. Marc Galanter of New York University Langone Medical Center. The study focused on different versions of a receptor for the neurotransmitter dopamine, which controls feelings of pleasure. Previous work had shown that one form of this receptor, which contains a series of seven repeats of the same DNA sequence, is associated with increased alcohol cravings in a variety of situations. To see if this DNA influenced reactions to social drinking situations, Helle Larsen of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, recruited young adult volunteers—allegedly to watch and evaluate TV commercials between 4 and 9 pm in a setting that resembled a typical Dutch pub. However, Larsen"s real objective was to see how many drinks each person consumed during the study"s break times. The researchers also collected DNA samples from each participant to see which version of the dopamine receptor they possessed. Larsen and her colleagues found that people with the seven-repeat version of the dopamine receptor were far more likely than those with a different version to drink heavily when they saw others doing so. The researchers suggest that individuals with this particular genetic background are much more sensitive to others" drinking behaviors. It"s not clear why this particular version of the dopamine receptor might trigger increased responsiveness to others" drinking, although some researchers have speculated that people with this receptor are less sensitive to dopamine"s actions and so are likely to drink more to try to feel its pleasurable effects. The authors also noted that seeing others drink lightly didn"t boost the urge to drink more in those with the receptor; only witnessing heavy drinking triggered the desire. While emphasizing that the results are preliminary and need replication, the authors said the study setup simulated a real-life situation, similar to that faced in a bar, restaurant or at a party. Individuals with this genetic propensity may have to avoid many social drinking situations if they wish to curb their own alcohol intake. Social psychologist Henry Wechsler, of the Harvard School of Public Health, cautioned that a couple of aspects of the experiment may have influenced the results, however. The drinks offered during the study were free, but "studies have shown that price has a significant effect on drinking behavior," he said. Also, it"s possible that the participants" behavior was altered because they thought of themselves as being under the watch of "responsible scientists," he said. "They may consider themselves protected from harms associated with heavy drinking."

单选题The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent 1 that tensions over inequality in wealth now 2 tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isn"t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isn"t what sets them 3 or creates so much 4 toward them. Let"s take a guy—call him Hank—who built a successful auto-repair business and 5 it to 30 locations, and now his 6 in the business is worth $100 million. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didn"t complete college at all. He grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didn"t complete college, either. He now lives in a neighborhood with other rich people, but they"re mostly other people who got rich the same way he did. He has a lot of money, but he doesn"t have power or influence over national culture, politics or economy, 7 does he even have any particular influence over the culture, politics or economy of the city where he lives. He"s just rich. The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country. By "the people who run the country," I mean a small 8 of people—well under 100,000, by a 9 definition—who are 10 for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the success (or failure) of the nation"s leading corporations and financial institutions and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly 11 a common culture that 12 them from the rest of the country. Fifty years ago, the people who rose to the most influential positions overwhelmingly had Hank"s kind of 13 , thoroughly 14 in the American mainstream. They have 15 tastes and preferences and seek out enclaves of others who share them. Their culture 16 little with the lifestyle or the popular culture of the rest of the nation; in fact, members of the new upper class increasingly 17 that mainstream lifestyle and culture. If this divide continues to widen, it will completely destroy 18 has made America"s national civic culture 19 : a fluid, 20 society where people from different backgrounds live side by side and come together for the common good.

单选题Ernest Hemingway was one of the most important American writers in the history of contemporary American literature. He was the 1 spokesperson for the Lost Generation and also the sixth American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1954). His writing style and personal life 2 a 3 influence on American writers of his time. Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in a doctor"s family in Oak Park, in the 4 of Chicago. The novel 5 established Hemingway"s 6 was The Sun Also Rises (1926). The story described a group of 7 Americans and Britons living in France. That is to 8 , it described the life of the members of the 9 Lost Generation after World War I. Hemingway"s second major novel was A Farewell to Arms (1929), a love story 10 in wartime Italy. That novel was 11 by Death in the Afternoon (1932) and Green Hills of Africa (1935). His two 12 of short stories Men without Women (1927) and Winner Take Nothing (1933) established his fame 13 the master of short stories. In the late 1930"s, Hemingway began to express 14 about social problems. His novel To Have and Have Not (1937) 15 economic and political injustices. The novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) 16 the conflict of the Spanish Civil War. In 1952, Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea , for 17 he won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize. In 1954, Hemingway was 18 the Nobel Prize of Literature. Later, being 19 and ill, he shot 20 on July 2, 1961.

单选题 Two years ago Japan was struck by a strong earthquake that triggered a disastrous tsunami. Now comes a sobering account of the human and environmental toll. Gretel Ehrlich, an American writer, flew to the north-east coast of the island of Honshu three months after the quake. A student of Japanese poetry and Buddhist philosophy, she was drawn to "meet those who faced the wave and survived". Readers of her book can witness the devastation through keen eyes. This stretch of coastline was described by a 17th-century poet, Basho, as the most beautiful spot in Japan. In June 2011 it was "a plain of chaos, a monstrous picture that no eye, no painting could truly capture". Roving the 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) of shattered coast, Ms. Ehrlich seeks out survivors and relays their stories. Pervasive are reports on the radiation spewing from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, reflections on human suffering and resilience, and a series of dreadful facts. More than 28,700 people died in Japan; thousands more went missing. The tsunami wave rose 38 metres (124 feet), washing away entire towns. The reactor meltdown caused "the worst maritime contamination disaster in recorded history". The energy released was 600m times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. "Three sorrows: quake, tsunami, meltdown", encapsulates the disaster. Ms. Ehrlich does not provide a comprehensive reckoning, but a set of stories. The tsunami is retold as it happens through a blog updated as a fisherman races out to sea, uploading observations from his mobile phone. Months later, corpses still surface. One mother has rented an industrial digger and ceaselessly explores the river channel searching for her child. "The sea floor is covered in debris," an old fisherman says. "{{U}}If you go trolling for flatfish, you might pull out a dead friend.{{/U}}"

单选题It"s hardly news that the immigration system is a mess. Foreign nationals have long been slipping across the border with fake papers, and visitors who arrive in the U.S. legitimately often overstay their legal welcome without being punished. But since Sept. 11, it"s become clear that terrorists have been shrewdly factoring the weaknesses of our system into their plans. In addition to their mastery of forging passports, at least three of the 19 Sept.11 hijackers were here on expired visas. That"s been a safe bet until now. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) lacks the resources, and apparently the inclination, to keep track of the estimated 2 million foreigners who have intentionally overstayed their welcome. But this laxness toward immigration fraud may be about to change. Congress has already taken some modest steps. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, requires the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department and the INS to share more data, which will make it easier to stop watch-listed terrorists at the border. But what"s really needed, critics say, is even tougher laws and more resources aimed at tightening up border security. Reformers are calling for a rollback of rules that hinder law enforcement. They also want the INS to hire hundreds more border patrol agents and investigators to keep illegal immigrants out and to track them down once they"re here. Reformers also want to see the INS set up a database to monitor whether visa holders actually leave the country when they are required to. All these proposed changes were part of a new border-security bill that passed the House of Representatives but died in the Senate last week. Before Sept. 11, legislation of this kind had been blocked by two powerful lobbies: universities, which rely on tuition from foreign students who could be kept out by the new law, and business, which relies on foreigners for cheap labor. Since the attacks, they"ve backed off. The bill would have passed this time but for congressional maneuverings and is expected to be reintroduced and to pass next year. Also on the agenda for next year: a proposal, backed by some influential law-makers, to split the INS into two agencies—a good cop that would tend to service functions like processing citizenship papers and a bad cop that would concentrate on border inspections, deportation and other functions. One reason for the division, supporters say, is that the INS has in recent years become too focused on serving tourists and immigrants. After the Sept. 11 tragedy, the INS should pay more attention to serving the millions of ordinary Americans who rely on the nation"s border security to protect them from terrorist attacks.

单选题I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room—a women"s group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening one man had been particularly talkative frequently offering ideas and anecdotes while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don"t talk to them. This man quickly nodded in agreement. He gestured toward his wife and said, "She"s the talker in our family." The room burst into laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. "It"s true," he explained. "When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn"t keep the conversation going, we"d spend the whole evening in silence." This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage. The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late 1970s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her new book Divorce Talk that most of the women she interviewed—but only a few of the men—gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year—a virtual epidemic of failed conversation. In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of daily life-support work like cleaning, cooking and social arrangements. Instead, they focused on communication: "He doesn"t listen to me." "He doesn"t talk to me." I found, as Hacker observed years before, that most wives want their husbands to be first and foremost conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives. In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.

单选题I came away from my years of teaching on the college and university level with a conviction that enactment, performance, dramatization are the most successful forms of teaching. Students must be incorporated, made, so far as possible, an integral part of the learning process. The notion that learning should have in it an element of inspired play would seem to the greater part of the academic establishment merely silly, but that is nonetheless the case. Of Ezekiel Cheever, the most famous schoolmaster of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, his onetime student Cotton Mather wrote that he so planned his lessons that his pupils "came to work as though they came to play," and Alfred North Whitehead, almost three hundred years later, noted that a teacher should make his/her students "glad they were there". Since, we are told, 80 to 90 percent of all instruction in the typical university is by the lecture method, we should give close attention to this form of education. There is, I think, much truth in Patricia Nelson Limerick"s observation that "lecturing is an unnatural act, an act for which God did not design humans. It is perfectly all right, now and then, for a human to be possessed by the urge to speak, and to speak while others remain silent. But to do this regularly, one hour and 15 minutes at a time... for one person to drag on while others sit in silence? ...I do not believe that this is what the Creator... designed humans to do." The strange, almost incomprehensible fact is that many professors, just as they feel obliged to write dully, believe that they should lecture dully. To show enthusiasm is to risk appearing unscientific, unobjective; it is to appeal to the students" emotions rather than their intellect. Thus the ideal lecture is one filled with facts and read in an unchanged monotone. The cult of lecturing dully, like the cult of writing dully, goes back, of course, some years. Edward Shils, professor of sociology, recalls the professors he encountered at the University of Pennsylvania in his youth. They seemed "a priesthood, rather uneven in their merits but uniform in their bearing; they never referred to anything personal. Some read from old lecture notes and then haltingly explained the thumb-worn last lines. Others lectured from cards that had served for years, to judge by the worn edges.... The teachers began on time, ended on time, and left the room without saying a word more to their students, very seldom being detained by questioners.... The classes were not large, yet there was no discussion. No questions were raised in class, and there were no office hours."

单选题Whatever else went wrong in the world this year, no one can complain about a shortage of celebrity breakups. From Jennifer Aniston"s split with Brad Pitt in January to Jessica Simpson"s divorce from Nick Lachey in December, 2005 was filled with ruined romance. But hold the tears—at least for the ex-wives. Bad marriages might have been making them sick. Researchers say that long-term anger and hostility between partners is much more dangerous for women than men and can impair our immune system and put us at risk for depression, high blood pressure and even heart disease. In a study published in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues at Ohio State University recruited 42 healthy couples who had been married an average of 12 years to spend two 24-hour stretches in a hospital research unit. On the first visit, the couples were encouraged to be loving and supportive of each other. On the second visit, they talked about their areas of conflict. On each visit, a special vacuum tube created blister wounds on their arms that were monitored for healing. The most hostile couples took an average of a day longer to heal. "Hostile marital interactions really enhance production of stress hormones, especially for women," Kiecolt-Glaser says. "And immune change is greater for women than for men." What makes women so vulnerable to a husband"s hostility? Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry and psychology, says women remember both positive and negative interactions more than men because they"re generally more aware of the emotional content of a relationship. Women have larger and broader social networks than men, she says, and they"re more sensitive to "adverse events" in their networks—a friend, a child, or a sister in trouble. That sensitivity is especially acute when it comes to their most intimate relationship, with their husband. A common laboratory strategy for studying marriage, Kiecolt-Glaser says, is to watch couples talk about a disagreement and then have each partner rate their own and their spouse"s behavior. "Women"s ratings of the behavior are much closer to the outside observer"s codings of hostility than men"s," she says. "Men simply don"t see it." Long-term unhappy marriages have serious health consequences. In another study published earlier this year in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and San Diego State University looked at data from more than 400 healthy women who were followed for 13 years before and after menopause. They found that marital dissatisfaction tripled a woman"s chances of having metabolic syndrome, a group of heart-risk factors. Only widows were more likely to have metabolic syndrome than the unhappy wives; even divorced and single women had better health-risk profiles. What should you take away from all this? Kiecolt-Glaser says couples should learn to keep hostility in check. "When relationships are stressed," she says, "you see a "tit for tat" kind of behavior where things really escalate. The most important thing is to cut that off early."

单选题Take the case of public education alone. The principal difficulty faced by the schools has been the tremendous increase in the number of pupils. This has been caused by the advance of the legal age for going into industry and the impossibility of finding a job even when the legal age has been reached. In view of the technological improvements in the last few years, business will require in the future proportionately fewer workers than ever before. The result will be still further raising of the legal age for going into employment, and still further difficulty in finding employment when that age has been attained. If we cannot put our children to work, we must put them in school. We may also be quite confident that the present trend toward a shorter day and a shorter week will be maintained. We have developed and shall continue to have a new leisure class. Already the public agencies for adult education are swamped by the tide that has swept over them since depression began. They will be little better off when it is over. Their support must come from the taxpayer. It is surely too much to hope that these increases in the cost of public education can be borne by the local communities. They cannot care for the present restricted and inadequate system. The local communities have failed in their efforts to cope with unemployment. They cannot expect to cope with public education on the scale on which we must attempt it. The answer to the problem of unemployment has been Federal relief. The answer to the problem of public education may have to be much the same, and properly so. If there is one thing in which the citizens of all parts of the country have an interest, it is in the decent education of the citizens of all parts of the country. Our income tax now goes in part to keep our neighbors alive. It may have to go in part as well to make our neighbors intelligent. We are now attempting to preserve the present generation through Federal relief of the destitute. Only a people determined to ruin the next generation will refuse such Federal funds as public education may require.

单选题Most people can recall a kid from grade school who couldn"t stay seated, who talked out of turn and fidgeted constantly, and who always had to ask other kids what the homework assignment was. This kind of student has been tagged with a variety of labels over the years: antisocial personality, conduct disorder, stupid. But recent advances in psychology and brain science are now suggesting that a child"s ability to inhibit distracting thoughts and stay focused may be a fundamental cognitive skill, one that plays a big part in academic success from preschool on. The scientific name for this set of skills is "executive function," or EF. It"s an emerging concept in student assessment and could eventually displace traditional measures of ability and achievement. EF comprises not only effortful control and cognitive focus but also working memory and mental flexibility—the ability to adjust to change, to think outside the box. These are the uniquely human skills that, taken together, allow us keep our more impulsive and distractible brain in check. New research shows that EF, more than IQ, leads to success in basic academics like arithmetic and grammar. It also suggests that we can pump up these EF skills with regular exercise, just as we do with muscles. Psychologist Adele Diamond of the University of British Columbia has been testing the EF concept in the classroom, with provocative results. In one recent study Diamond convinced a large low-income urban school district to let her experiment with its preschoolers. Half the classrooms, involving hundreds of children, adopted a new curriculum specifically designed to boost EF, while the other half used a more traditional academic curriculum aimed at basic literacy. The EF curriculum has many strands, but here is one example just to give a flavor. Instead of keeping the classroom quiet, kids are actually taught and encouraged to talk to themselves, privately but aloud, as a way of helping them exert mental control. In one exercise, for example, the kids have to match their movements to symbols. When the teacher holds up a circle they clap, with a triangle they hop, and so forth. The kids are taught to talk themselves through the mental exercise. "OK, now clap." "Twirl now." This has been shown to flex and enhance the brain"s ability to switch gears, to suppress one piece of information and sub in a new one. It takes discipline; it"s the elementary school equivalent of saying "I really need stop thinking about next week"s vacation and focus on this report." This is a vast oversimplification of a curriculum that has taken years to develop and is grounded in rigorous scientific studies of children"s brain development. The EF tests were very difficult cognitive challenges that require kids to inhibit their automatic responses. The EF-trained children outperformed the traditionally educated kids on every single test. In fact, the differences were so dramatic after one year that some school officials opted out of the experiment to give all the kids the benefit of EF training.